arguably, it sort of was; Anakin went to the dark side because of attachments the Jedi Code told him not to have, and those attachments are exactly how Palpatine got him. and arguably, Yoda and Obi-Wan eventually figured it out, since they never pushed the "have no attachments" thing on Luke*.

*of course, this is after you smooth out the stories into a coherent whole, rather than the insane gibbering that Lucas is likely to give you.

No, no. It was all because of two twins that ended up blowing up a star system because they were arguing over a woman...Or something... So says the comic Linkara reviewed recently._________________Deviant Art | Twitter | Tumblr

Rage isn't the only blueprint for change, though, nor, perhaps, in the real world, the best.

By all means, enlighten us. Bonus points if you can actually site historical evidence of massive social upheaval happening without a bunch of people being pissed as hell.

Since you mention enlightenment, what of the Enlightenment itself? It brought on enormous social change. Someone else mentioned Gandhi. The Agricultural Revolution was brought about by the cheap manufacture of nitrogen. Any number of positive changes to society have been wrought by changes to laws, such as to Britain's penal code. Sometimes these changes have involved not anger, but pity or common-sense.

Although someone usually winds up getting upset no matter what happens, a corollary is not always a cause. I would be a little disappointed in human nature if rage turned out to be the sole effective method of changing society. It would reduce social reform to a type of warfare - a series of Revolutions that somehow didn't wind up Reigns of Terror.

I don't have a comprehensive theory of social change, nor a Marxist-style vision of the steps that should be taken to reach an ideal society, so I admit to feeling on uncertain ground here. But I do think that if anger can be replaced with something less close to hatred, without compromising effective action, it probably should be.

but anger (even rage) isn't an action, it's an emotion. what causes change is when you do something with that anger. and what you do with the anger determines how that change occurs: you can get angry which makes you passionate and determined and so you get together a bunch of like minded people and you act to change the system - or you get angry and go out and burn down the nearest thing that means "the system" to you.

but you never would have done either if you weren't angry about something.

you may have a point with the penal laws (although after watching "Garrow's Law", i suspect there were at least a few people angry at the ills the penal system produced) - but i'm not sure you can credit something like the artificial production of nitrogen with something that was done intentionally to change the social structure. it may have done so, but it wasn't because people felt the social structure needed to change._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

Well it's already been said but none of that sounds anger free, just violence free (or coincidental). Which hey, I love violence free progress! Coincidental progress is kinda cool, too, but I sure as hell wouldn't bank on it to fix known problems, since... well, it wouldn't be coincidental then, would it?

I'm not gunna say violent is more productive than nonviolent (or the reverse), though, because the world is a messy place and there is just too much stuff to consider to make a blanket statement like that._________________Samsally the GrayAce